“In the daily haste of our joint labors and discussions on foreign policy, we no longer dwelt upon the problem of Jewish policy. At the time Kaltenbrunner came into office this question was already so far advanced that Kaltenbrunner could not have had any more influence on it. If Kaltenbrunner expressed himself at all on the subject, it was to the effect that mistakes had been made here that could never be made good.”
This witness then finally confirmed the fact that this operation was conducted independently through a direct channel of command from Himmler to Eichmann and said that the position of Eichmann, which already had been a dominating one when Heydrich was still alive, had increased steadily, so that eventually he had acted completely independently in the entire Jewish sphere.
And here I add that, according to the statement of Hoess, the only man left alive who is familiar with this question, it is established that only about 200 or 300 people knew of that dreadful order of Himmler’s which was given during a conference which lasted for 10 or 15 minutes, on the basis of which more than four million people were exterminated. And I add that a large nation of 80 million had learned little or probably nothing about these things which happened in the Southeast of the Reich during the war. Professor Burckhardt states that Kaltenbrunner, when discussing the Jewish question, declared:
“It is the greatest nonsense; all the Jews should be released, that is my personal opinion.”
But in spite of all this, the fundamental question is raised for the problem of guilt: May a high official and the director of an influential office, whose subordinates in a far-reaching hierarchy continually commit crimes against humanity and against the rules of international law, assume such an office at all or remain in such an office, although he condemns these crimes? Or is it perhaps a different case if this man has the intention of doing all that is humanly possible to break the chain of crimes and thereby finally to become a benefactor of humanity? The last question is generally to be answered in the affirmative. It is to be appraised solely from the standpoint of the highest ethical principles.
My further thought in this connection is the following: He who invokes such a philanthropic intention is free of guilt if from the first day of his taking over such an office he refuses to take any active part in the actual commitment of the crime, and, beyond this, avails himself of every conceivable possibility, even seeks it out, to achieve the elimination of evil orders and their execution through his never-ending resistance and every form of human cunning.
The defendant himself has also sensed and clearly recognized all these things. On account of the importance of the question I should like to refer to his interrogation:
“Question: ‘I ask you whether there was a possibility that you might have brought about a change after having gradually learned the conditions in the Secret State Police and in the concentration camps, et cetera. If this possibility existed, will you then say that an alleviation, that is, an improvement, was brought about in the conditions in these fields due to your remaining in office?’ ”
Kaltenbrunner says:
“I repeatedly applied for service at the front. But the most burning question which I had to decide for myself was whether the conditions would be thereby improved, alleviated, or changed. Or was it my duty to do everything possible in this position to change all the conditions that have been so severely criticized here? Since my repeated demands to be sent to the front were refused, all I could do was to make a personal attempt to change a system, the ideological and legal foundations of which I could no longer change, as has been illustrated by all the orders presented here from the period before I was in office; I could only try to moderate these methods in order to help eliminate them for good.